Have you ever been lost before? Were you scared? Did you feel alone and helpless? Or did you take control of the situation and fight to survive? Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is a novel that is very realistic and packed with suspense. Its use of characterization, suspense, and detail forces the reader to confront any fears they may have about being lost.
While there are a limited number of characters in the story, King presents each very realistically. The main character in the story is Trisha McFarland, a nine year old girl who lives with her mother and brother Pete. Her parents are divorced and her mother and brother are always fighting. She doesn't like hearing them fight; this is the main reason she ends up lost in the woods. Another main character is a Boston Red Sox baseball player named Tom Gordon. He is Trisha and her dad's favorite baseball player. She thinks, ".Number 36 is the handsomest man alive, and if he ever touched her hand she"d faint" (11). .
Tom Gordon becomes a very important character in the story. When Trisha gets lost in the woods he becomes her imaginary friend and only link to the outside world when her walk-man breaks. She uses this hallucination to keep from becoming totally scared to death of the "special thing" (98) that follows her through the woods. His character also fits well into the book because the book is written around a baseball theme with chapters ordered by inning. .
Besides characterization, King uses suspense to keep the reader intrigued. As mentioned before, the chapters are arranged by innings and this is a very clever move on King's part. Because of this chapter setup, King moves the story along at about the same speed of a baseball game. Just as in most baseball games, the suspense builds as the innings progress. The beginning of the book is not very suspenseful; just Trisha getting lost in the woods. But as the story progresses, Trisha's fear and continued misfortune create even greater suspense.